We have decided …. to decide nothing at all !!!

Ok, so the verdict is in. We had our General Meeting last night and after 5 hours of deliberation we have come to the agreement that nothing should be decided until next year.

Already our 1st General Meeting of May 31st had been annulled on a technicality so yesterday we finally sat down with the general agreement that no one was leaving the meeting until we’d gone through all 33 motions in the Agenda !

The thing is that although the majority of homeowners in our building want to get our façade repainted and renovated and are willing to pay for it, only the minority agrees to changing all the windows in the building to a same and unique model.

Unfortunately, the project presented during last night’s session did not disassociate these two issues so we could not vote separately on them and thus people decided to play it safe and vote NO for the whole thing.

After 5 hours of shouting, accusing, yelling and negotiating we came to the agreement that the renovation project will be amended and presented as a single project during next year’s General Meeting.

So where does that leave us?

Well, some headway WAS made though … we agreed on a single and unique model of windows which will have to be adopted from now on when homeowners decide to change their windows, betting that eventually the entire building will be harmonized over the years.

For those of us who want to change our windows in the near future (for economical, ecological, soundproof and aesthetics reasons) we have agreed to get together to try to negotiate a common low price and have them changed to the new model .... So you see ? Some progress was made.

All in all it was quite interesting to see how people can get so rallied up over such insignificant details.

Highlights of the evening:
- Choosing the window model
- Debating over the colour the building should be painted (not even having decided when!)
- Deciding on a model for the shutters
- Approving last year’s budget
- Deciding on this year’s budget

And for those of you who might be wondering : we agreed to keep the loggias just as they are. Our building's architect's descendants have sent us a letter saying we can do whatever we want with the loggias because basically they don't care. Great !